47 pages • 1 hour read
Karl Marx, Friedrich EngelsThe German Ideology
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, historian, sociologist, and communist. Marx published The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Friedrich Engels and Das Kapital, a three-volume study of capital (1867-1883). Marx’s writing had considerable influence on intellectual, economic, and political history and theory. Marx’s core concept is that human society develops through class conflict. In capitalist societies this conflict is manifested in the tension between the ruling classes (the bourgeoise), who own the means of production, and the working classes (the proletariat), who are wageworkers. The theory of historical materialism argues that the internal tensions produced by capitalism mean that it will eventually collapse. Marx supported revolutionary change driven by the working class to dismantle capitalism and bring about a new socioeconomic system. The inequality and instability of capitalism would lead to the development of class consciousness among the working class, who would build a classless society characterized by free association of producers. This political system was called communism.
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German philosopher, historian, and communist. With his collaborator Karl Marx, Engels developed Marxist theory. In 1845 Engels published The Conditions of the Working Class in England, which was based on his firsthand observation of working-class people in British cities. Engels documented child labor, impoverished workers, and the environmental damage caused by industrialism. Engels is best known for cowriting The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. His father was a textile manufacturer. Engels funded much of Marx’s research and writing, including Das Kapital. Marx and Engels also cowrote The Holy Family (1845), a critique of Young Hegelians that is frequently referenced in The German Ideology.
Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) was a German philosopher and theologian. Bauer advanced a theory of infinite self-consciousness that focused on rational autonomy and historical progress. He argued that socialism did not adequately address human individualism. Marx and Engels are particularly dismissive of his philosophy. He is the focus of the shortest section of Marx and Engels’s critique in “The German Ideology, Volume 1: Critique of Modern German Philosophy, According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer, and Stirner.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was an influential German philosopher. In 1806 Hegel published the Phenomenology of Spirit, which developed an idealist analysis of the human mind. Hegel believed that the world was dependent on the mind’s perception and that concepts and ideas conditioned the world. History was driven by the progress of the human spirit toward rationality and freedom. One of Hegel’s key concepts, the teleological concept of history, was adopted by Marx. Hegel argued that ideas were rooted in historically specific contexts. Hegel’s concept of the dialectic was also influential to Marx.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) was an influential post-Hegelian philosopher. In 1841 he published The Essence of Christianity, which criticized religion. Associated with the Young Hegelian movement, Feuerbach used Hegelian theories of the dialectic and the teleological view of history to argue that Western culture, particularly Christianity, would be replaced by a new system. Feuerbach shifted toward materialism, arguing that Hegel’s concept of the absolute was just another word for God and that Young Hegelians were replicating Christianity through their emphasis on idealism. However, Feuerbach was critiqued for Marx and Engels for inconsistent materialism.
Max Stirner
Max Stirner (1806-1856) is the primary focus of Marx and Engels’s critique in “The German Ideology, Volume 1: Critique of Modern German Philosophy, According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer, and Stirner.” The response to Stirner’s ideas takes up over 300 pages of the text. Stirner’s most famous work is The Ego and Its Own (1844), which attacked religious modes of thought and oppressive social institutions, arguing for individual autonomy. A more literal translation of the German title is “The Unique Individual and Their Property.” Max Stirner is referred to as Saint Max, Saint Sancho, and Sancho throughout the text (Sancho being a reference to the character Sancho Panza in Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote).
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